Chalk-Talk ~ Going Low Tech

I reserved the computer lab today to guide my students through the process of enrolling in my online Blackboard course, and to give them a little time to try out a U.S. geography game. I distributed new user IDs and passwords to every student. I created a step-by-step hardcopy guide for students to follow. I made a tear-off section so families could post the course log-on directions on their fridges, with a return section to verify that they had successfully logged on at home.

Even though my classes were scheduled for the lab, it was crowded, so I took a mobile lab into my classroom and distributed laptops. Some kids couldn’t log on. Some logged on to a ‘phantom’ website that was like my site, but incomplete. We figured out that everyone had to start from the district webpage link, rather than the school library webpage link. We also found that if they clicked on my class link before they clicked the ‘enroll’ button, bad things happened. Finally, some computers just didn’t boot up.

Enough! I had the kids put the laptops away, and rolled the mobile lab into a corner, where it can stay for all I care. I went to the chalkboard. (yes, a chalkboard, one of the few still left) and drew an outline of North America. With a piece of chalk, I took my students on a visual tour of the major geographic features of the North American continent. We ‘flew’ from west to east, over the Sierra Nevada’s, up to the Cascades, the over the Great Salt Desert, the Grand Canyon and the Rockies. We buzzed the grasses of the Great Plains, ran up the Mississippi, over the Ohio Valley, and around the five Great Lakes. We came over the Appalachian Mountains to the Tidewater region and the eastern seaboard. All the while, I sketched and swirled and ball-parked these features on the chalkboard. It was a whirlwind tour, but it kept their attention when all the expensive electronic technology had failed.

Something to be said for good old chalk - it’s there when you need it. The map on the board was a mess. It was ball-park estimation, sketches and outlines of general areas. I’m wondering whether many of them will be able to ‘retell’ the chalk-talk story of their cross-country flight, with more geographic information, than if they’d gotten online and followed an interactive map game.